Snoring and Obstructive Sleep Apnea are generally known today as the same disease on a continuum of the sleep disorder severity scale. Starting at the modest degree of snoring ending in the fulminate obstructive sleep apnea condition, is known as a fact.
As the disease is closely related to a large variety of physical and mental conditions, treatment is of outmost importance as soon as possible.
Whereas the snoring condition is characterized by the sounds developed by vibrating tissues in the most dorsal area of the pharynx, either the nasopharynx, or the oropharynx or the laryngopharynx, the obstructive sleep apnea is characterized by actual respiration arrest caused by occlusion of the pharyngeal airways.
Apnea appears when the upper airway passages are being sucked close to the rear part of the throat when the person is trying to breathe during sleep. The occlusion can be the result of suction or by the lapse of tonus in the oral soft tissues during the relaxed sleep condition.
When the occlusion is there, no air is passing through the pharynx and down to the lungs this is the situation called OSAS (Obstructive Sleep Apnea Syndrome).
The obstruction can happen as often as 1000 times during the night time sleep in which the body is depraved from oxygen uptake from the air into the blood stream, which eventually leads to the aggravated symptoms.
The severity of OSAS has been described in the medical literature numerous times giving cause to a number of symptoms and diseases:    General headache    High blood pressure    Diabetes    Hypoxic pulmonary vasoconstriction    Cardiomyopathy    Pulmonary hypertonia with cor pulmonale (increased pressure in the heart-lung circuits)    Heart failure, heart arrhythmia, heart attack    Day time melancholy or depression    Intelligence alterations    Acid Reflux (GERD—Gastro Esophageal Reflux Disease)    Potency disturbances    Worsening of ADHD (Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), in addition to a large number of problems of a more social character, like, e.g., divorce, decreased labour activity, difficulties in keeping conversations in the track due to tiredness, etc.
Thus, compared to a normal control group without diseases, patients suffering from snoring and/or OSAS appear to have three times as many cases of coronary heart diseases, four times as many cerebral illnesses, such as clots, twelve times as many incidents of car accidents and twice as many labour accidents due to day time sleepiness as a result of lack of sleep and/or impaired sleep quality.
Due to these conditions the life time expectancy is severely limited for these patients, and their quality of life is compromised.
The continuum of snoring diseases gives the following frequency figures;                40% of adults over 40 snore (approx. 87 million Americans)        9% of men and 4% of women suffer from some form of OSAS                    (approx. 30 million Americans)                        Less than 10% of OSA sufferers have been diagnosed (Approx 3 million Americans)        Of those, less than 25% have been successfully treated.        
For the above reasons, it is important to provide devices to eliminate and prevent apnea and the incipient stages thereof.
In the prior an, a number of surgical techniques for removal of the tissue involved in the obstruction have been developed, but all of these techniques seem to incur a certain invalidation of the patient and, at the same time, do not have a fully predictable effect.
Furthermore, a number of medical treatments have been tried out with predominantly deficient or sometimes even damaging effect.
Finally, the scientific literature and the patent literature disclose numerous devices for alarming the snoring patient during sleep; devices for tongue thrust, devices for forward movement of the soft palate; devices for obstructing the oral cavity (delimited by the lips), thereby engaging the sound from the snoring; furthermore, mandibular advancement splints or appliances, mouth guard-like devices for provocation of either tongue, hyoid bone or jaw position changes, thereby eliminating snoring;—all of these requiring active participation from competent professionals, such as medical doctors, dentists, etc. Among such prior art devices for or attempts to inhibit snoring, the following are of particular interest in the present context.
EP 0 794 749 B1 discloses a jaw position-regulating oral device for preventing snoring and obstructive sleep apnea during sleep. The device consist of two members, a first member to engage with the maxillary dentition and a second member to engage with the mandibular dentition, both connected by a resilient hinge. The mechanism is embedded in the mandibular advancement relative to the maxilla.
WO 2013/032 884 A1 discloses a mandibular advancement device with an upper and lower member to engage the maxillary and mandibulary dentition respectively. The lower tray assembly is mated to and slidably adjustable by the patient relative to the upper tray assembly.
WO 2009/062 541 A1 discloses a mandibular advancement orthosis in which the device the comprises a unitary flexible member that can be folded on itself for interaction with the teeth of the upper and lower arches, and an interchangeable flexible strip for surrounding the teeth of the upper arch, having a length that can be modified in order to obtain the desired level of mandibular advancement.
US 2009/0014 013 A1 discloses a mandibular advancement splint made of two thermoformable trays designed to envelop the upper and lower arch. The advancement splint includes an articulated frame having rigid and flexible elements immersed in the thermoformable flexible material or molded around it.
EP 1 719 481 A1 discloses a mandibular advancement device with a lateral link incorporated into a mandibular protrusion device comprising an upper dental tray and a lower dental tray so as to advance or retract the lower dental arch during a vertical movement between the two. The link is adapted to be detachably accommodated in an opening of a ball pivot.
EP 2 529 710 A1 discloses a device for mandibular advancement in which an upper member and a lower member are interconnected by means of pivotable connection in which at least one is formed as a stud.
CA 223 650 3 A1 discloses a mandibular advancement device which uses elastic bands to pull the jaw forward. The upper part having a set of retention hooks and the lower part having a set of interchangeable slide-in posterior occlusal bite planes.
WO 2008/130 413 A1 discloses a mandibular advancement device for pulling the lower jaw forward composed of an upper and a lower member to engage the dentition, where a ball type of hook support is located on both sides of the upper tray at a forward position and a ball type of hook supports are located at a rearward position of both sides of the lower jaw. A tension coil is attached to each of the upper and lower ball type of hook supports.
WO 2011/115 962 A1 discloses a mandibular advancement splint made of two trays designed to envelop the upper and lower arch. The upper appliance has a pair of adjustable wings attached to the body, and the lower has a pair of fixed wings attached to the body. The upper wings are slidable adjustable.
US 2010/004 380 5 A1 discloses a mandibular advancement device with an upper and lower member to engage with the dentition of the human. The lower dental plate having two pairs of spaced apart pillars and two removable attachable horizontal displacements inserts on the upper part.
GB 2 264 868 discloses an anti-snoring device for oral use, comprising members having upper and lower surfaces which engage the user's maxillary and mandibular dental arches respectively. The upper and lower surfaces are spaced so that the mandible is placed in a forwardly offset position relative to its normal position. The spacing also tensions the masticatory muscles to maintain the device in place.
US 2011/001 722 0 A1 discloses a self-titratable mandibular repositioning device that allows for adjusting the maintained forward position by simply biting-down to preserve the desired degree of mandibular advancement, made of a lower and an upper member to engage the dentition.
US 2008/011 579 1 A1 discloses a mandibular advancement device with an intraocclusal removable device in the form of a “U” that is placed covering the all of the upper jaw teeth, wherein two steps, one in each extreme of the lower part of the element, which impede the mandible be closed completely on its normal occlusion, forcing it to produce a forward displacement of the lower jaw.
US 2005/023 600 3 A1 discloses a mandibular advancement device as a single piece of molded plastic with said unit modeled from four theoretical positions including a shield like anterior portion fitted and anchored between anterior teeth-gums and behind the lips.
US 2010/030 045 8 A1 discloses a mandibular advancement device with an upper and lower member to engage with the dentition of the human. The members are including a cam associated with one of the jaws and a follower associated with the other jaw.
US 2008/009 902 9 A1 discloses a mandibular advancement device composed of a maxillary main body for removable attachment to the maxillary teeth with a protrusive element extending from the central portion of the body and a mandibular removable appliance attached to the mandibular anterior teeth.
EP 2 491 901 A1 discloses regulatable intraoral mandibular advancement device for preventing snoring and sleep apnea in which a screw system is located in the central part of the connection between the upper and lower members for the engagement of the dentition.
AU 1999 476 15 B2 discloses a mandibular advancement device in which the upper jaw is firmly fitted into an upper plate and the lower jaw is firmly fitted into a lower plate, these two parts are connected by means of opposing flange components located to be lying in an area and close to the posterior teeth.
US 2013/001 476 5 A1 discloses a tongue and mandibular advancement device in which an upper member has hook supports anteriorly and a lower member has a plurality of hook support at the rearward position.
EP 0 337 201 discloses an orthodontic appliance comprising a first member to engage with the mandibular dentition and a second member to engage with the maxillary dentition. The two members are resiliently hinged together to keep the upper and lower jaw in a normal position.
WO 92/11827 discloses an anti-snoring device for oral use consisting of a horseshoe-like upper jaw member for engaging the maxillary dentition, with the downward extending flange intended to extend into the lingual vestibule in order to maintain a forward posture of the lower jaw.
EP 0 312 368 discloses an anti-snoring device for oral use which resembles the above-mentioned device, the main difference being, the design of the airway passage.
WO 92/05752 discloses an anti-snoring device for oral use consisting of a spatial member congruent with the palate and a lower member adapted to the lingual aspects of the surfaces of the dentition in the lower jaw, hooks being attached to the occlusive plane of the device for fixing the two jaws in a predetermined relation.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,313,960 discloses an anti-snoring device for oral use consisting of two horseshoe-like individually shaped mouthpiece portions which are connected and fixed in a predetermined position in which the lower jaw protrudes in relation to the upper jaw.
While the above devices represent attempts to solve the snoring and apnea problems, they are all rather complicated in their design and most of these require the interaction of a professional team in their individual design. Furthermore, they are rather discomfortable for the wearer, and they do not appear convincing with respect to their capability of achieving an effective and long-tasting anti-snoring effect.
Thus, there is a demand for a relatively comfortable device which provides a high degree of inhibitory effect on snoring during even long sleeping periods, such as overnight, without adverse effects on the structures involved, and which at the same time is easy and simple to use and wear for normal non-skilled persons. The present invention provides such a device.